Below, please find the statement from the head of development of lubuntu for 14.10, ongoing to 15.04 and beyond.

Hi,

Time to start thinking about 14.10, and after. The future of LXDE (gtk2+ part) is uncertain, as only a few devs are currently improving the code (and the work is focused on the panel and the file manager) with an LTS behind us, we have the possibility to make massive changes without the fear of having support problem. However, migrate to Qt and LXQt for 14.10 seems too much optimistic :

LXQt is in alpha stage

We are not even sure there will be no breakage in the future (see next point)

LXQt is Qt4

It's migrating to Qt5. I don't think we should jump into the Qt4 version, if we are going to break things again when migrate to Qt5.

Pushing all LXQt into official repositories will take time

Without them, no real and official ISO testing will be possible. Usually, we have to set up this things for Alpha 1, to have time to makeadjustments. For now, A1 is out of the target, even with Qt4 version of LXQt.

After the LXQt migration, we have to change most of our applications

These have to be converted to Qt ones. It needs time to discuss, compare, test and integrate them. We have to change 80 to 90 % of our seed …

Migrate from Gtk to Qt for the theming is not the easiest thing to do

We need time in this area too.

For those reasons, I don't think migrate to Qt for 14.10 is a good idea

I'll propose this plan :

For 14.10, keep the gtk part and update packages only.

Preparing the choice of default Qt applications

Releasing testing ISOs with Qt packages (outside the official Ubuntu building system).

Work on Qt5 with LXQt people

Push LXQt Qt5 version into official repositories

Look at the state of LXQt + our default applications choices and make a decision after 14.10 release.

Any comments on this ?

Regarding 14.10, we need a release manager as both phillw and me are not going to be fully available for this (for different reasons). The release manager is in charge of delivering the final ISO, by doing mostly QA work, and coordinates the work of different people according to the schedule.

If you want to participate in this area, please send phillw and me a mail with a description of what you will do as a release manager of Lubuntu (it's like a job interview, be convincing Also, it's not necessary a 1 people job, we may take several people for the help). It's also an important part of the release process of Lubuntu, that's why it's not open to everyone.

Regarding the Qt migration, LXQt packages are already available in https://launchpad.net/~lubuntu-dev/+archive/lubuntu-daily You have to install lxqt-metapackage. They are build directly from git, so be prepared to various breakages. If you have problem using them, feel free to ask on the mailing list.

Regarding the change of default applications, I'm preparing blueprints to discuss every topics, please don't create any extra topics until I finish the initial ones (I have aprox. 30 topics to set up …). You can monitor https://blueprints.launchpad.net/lubuntu-brainstorming/qt-migrationfor the progress. Please wait those blueprints before starting the flow of discussion on the audio player and the webbrowser ...